


What the Lawyer Had to Say

by ProtoNeoRomantic



Series: Patch Works [9]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Attorney-Client Relationship, F/M, Gen, Lawyers, Legal Advice, Legal Ethics, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Statutory Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 14:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1308760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy and Giles's lawyer finds himself in an unenviable position when Joyce calls him for assistance in the middle of the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What the Lawyer Had to Say

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Who Do You Think You Are?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1235281) by [ProtoNeoRomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic). 



Suddenly, other facts started realigning in Joyce’s head. A dozen red roses left by the kitchen door for her authentically heartbroken daughter on Valentine’s Night. The weeks of moping that had led up to that moment. The anguish and dread in her eyes as she read the single word, ‘soon.’ If Buffy and Angel’s ‘break up’ had been a hard break between the natural and the supernatural, not the back and forth tug of a normal human relationship drawing to an end, it was hard to see how the timeline could really work out. ‘What did you do for your birthday?’ ‘I got older.’ That was hell and gone from the morning after.

A morning after needs a night before. Apparently, Buffy had spent not only most of the night of her arrest but at least some part of the previous night alone with none other than Rupert Giles. Comforting him in his grief. Assisting him in his quest for revenge. It was too terrible. It made too much sense. Why tell a lie unless the truth was worse, or at least worse for someone? It also explained why she had sought him out for a ‘ride home’ the day after finding out she was pregnant instead of waiting to see him at school less than a day later.

Reaching a decision, Joyce got up and started packing. She had her bags stacked by the door before she remembered that she didn’t have her car with her. It was too late to rent one. Did the commuter flight she had taken this morning run on Saturdays? There was no point even calling the airlines. They didn’t open until five am. Until then, there was nothing she could do. No way to know if her daughter was ‘safe’ in the arms of her middle aged ‘Watcher’ or dead in a crypt somewhere.

But that wasn’t quite true. There was one thing. She could call Hank. He could be in Sunnydale in two and a half hours the way he drove. Was it worth it? What would he do when he got there? Whether he found Buffy in bed with her high school librarian or failed to find her at all, he’d probably end up calling the police or worse. Then what? Joyce would have liked to have known her daughter better, but she knew her well enough to know that if Mom and Dad tried to put her man in prison, Buffy wouldn’t take it lying down. She wouldn’t be seventeen forever. Only for another ten months in fact. She was more than stubborn enough to wait that long.

And of course there was still the possibility that she was imagining the whole thing, Joyce reminded herself. Buffy might just as well have been distressed by some other man or monster on both her birthday and Valentine’s Day, the tragedy of Angel still ahead of her. Was it possible she only wanted to believe the worst of Mr. Giles so that she could justify keeping Buffy away from him and his war, whatever the cost to mankind? All she really wanted was to know that Buffy was alive, to hope that, for tonight at least, she might be safe. Whatever else was or wasn’t going on between them, Rupert Giles seemed like the person most likely to have that information.

Suddenly Joyce thought of one other person she could call. She rummaged through her purse and came up with Hal Gaston’s card, his home number scrawled on the back for a special client of long standing. God! She had actually thanked Mr. Giles for his 'help' with Buffy’s problems! ‘Believe me,’ he’d said in that amused, self-effacing way of his, ‘it’s the least I can do.’ If half of her suspicions were correct, that was quite an understatement.

Joyce supposed she should feel some reluctance to wake her daughter’s attorney at this hour. She didn’t. If Mr. Giles trusted Hal with both his and Buffy’s most serious and sensitive problems, he was probably mixed up in this mystical council business up to his eyebrows. It was his war too.

The phone rang seven times before a sleepy voice murmured, “Hello?”

“Hal,” she said with tense urgency, “It’s Joyce Summers.”

“Wh—how did you get this number?”

“From Rupert Giles,” she explained quickly. He seemed seconds from hanging up. “Buffy’s missing.”

“Missing, but not dead?” said Hal with bleary resentment.

“That’s nothing to joke about,” Joyce shot back tersely.

“What do you want?” Hal grumbled.

“Rupert Giles’ home phone number,” she said flatly.

“Let me think a second,” Hal said a little more civilly. He lay back on his pillow trying to focus his two-in-the-morning mind on the wavery line between an attorney’s duty of loyalty and the general duties of a human being. Of course, there was no duty to protect anyone engaged in on-going criminal conduct, but technically he had no personal knowledge that that was actually the case. Unless of course you counted ordering teenage girls into mortal combat with demons as criminal conduct. Still, this woman had a right to know where her daughter was. Of course, there was more than one way to achieve that. “Why do you think he might be able to help you?” he asked, still paying for time to make up his mind.

“You know about the... organization that he belongs to, I suppose?” she asked warily.

Hal sat up. He was stunned. His understanding was that it was Council policy to leave parents as much in the dark as possible. But then, anyone who was asking the ‘hypothetical’ questions he’d been getting from Giles lately was probably a little beyond worrying about Council policy. “Yeah,” he said, after a long moment.

“Well then you know who my daughter is. If she’s... working tonight... maybe she checked in with him.”

Something in her voice said she was holding back. “I’m sure I have the number at the office,” Hal said, “I’ll get it for you first thing in the morning, if you don’t hear from her by then.”

“Thank you,” said Joyce with weary resignation. She hesitated on the verge of parting words, saying instead, “You thought I would say something else. About the reason he might know where Buffy is.”

Hal sighed. “I try never to speculate on what other people are thinking,” he lied.

“Is there something else?” Joyce asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” Hal said, truthfully but not very.

“But you didn’t have to ask what I meant by that,” Joyce pointed out.

“The reasons a mother might want to question a man about her teenage daughter’s whereabouts in the wee hours on the morning?” Hal asked. “Not much of a mystery, I’m afraid.”

“But you don’t think there’s anything between them like that?” she pressed.

“Like I said,” Hal answered, “I try not to speculate.”

“Well, you’ve known him a few years I take it,” Joyce persisted “what kind of a man is he?”

“Reliable,” he said. It was the first word that came to his mind when he thought of Rupert Giles. If the man said he would do something, you could count on it being done. The second word that came to his mind was ‘secretive’, which lead more or less directly to ‘dangerous’ when you knew what even a few of his secrets were. “Circumspect,” he said. “He’s not one to over share,” he added, “At least, not unless it’s legally relevant”.

“Would you trust him with your daughter?” Joyce asked.

It took Hal a minute but he came up with an answer he was pretty pleased with. “About as much as I’d trust the Marine Corp with my son,” he said.

****

 _Buffy was floating in a warm dry sea. She was safe and loved. Contented. At peace. The universe was a complete and unified whole. It was beautiful. It made sense._ The phone rang. She broke the surface of the not-exactly-water and emerged into consciousness. She felt Giles’ warm, solid, naked body wrap a little more tightly around her as he reached across her to the phone on the night table on what she was now thinking of as ‘her’ side of the bed. She snuggled against him as he uttered a doubtful, “Hello?”

“If you know where that girl is,” said Hal testily, “and for God’s sake don’t tell me if you do—you had better have her call her mother.”

Giles sat up in bed, disentangling himself a little from the girl in question. “Her mother?” he asked, taken off guard. Buffy sat up next to him, putting her ear to the receiver on his shoulder to hear what was being said.

“She called _here_ just now—thanks for giving her my home number by the way—looking for her and I quote ‘missing’ daughter!” Hal informed him angrily.

“Good lord,” Giles gasped.

“I don’t like being put it this position.” Hal groused, “I’m your lawyer, not your accomplice. Straighten it out.”

“Yes, erm, thank you,” Giles managed.

“Please,” said Hal significantly, “don’t mention it.”

He looked at Buffy. “I just talked to her at like seven o’clock,” she assured him defensively.

“Well, obviously,” he countered, “she has called since then and found you not at home. You’d better... allay her fears before she starts calling the police again.”

 

 

 


End file.
